The family of the only Canadian citizen who was still missing after Hamas militants conducted a brutal assault on Israel has confirmed her death.
A relative says Judih Weinstein Haggai died on Oct. 7, the day of the attacks that killed an estimated 1,200 people, and her body is being held in the Gaza Strip.
The 70-year-old woman’s family says she held Canadian, Israeli and American citizenships.
Weinstein Haggai was born in New York state but moved to Toronto at the age of three, and moved to Israel 20 years later to live with her husband.
She lived in the Nir Oz kibbutz, which sits less than three kilometres from her home, and was a volunteer who helped Palestinians in Gaza.
Weinstein Haggai made puppets to help teach students English, and often posted haikus and meditations on YouTube.
In an interview earlier this month, Weinstein Haggai’s relatives said she and her husband Gadi Haggai were out on an early-morning walk when the Oct. 7 attacks started.
She sent a text message to members of her community saying that a militant on a motorcycle had shot her husband, and that she was less severely wounded.
Her kibbutz, the term for a collective farming community, tried to dispatch an ambulance, but couldn’t do so before Hamas militants arrived.
Israeli officials later told family members that Weinstein Haggai’s cellphone signal was detected within Gaza, her family said.
Last week, officials confirmed the family’s suspicions that Gadi Haggai, 73, had died on Oct. 7, though relatives still held onto hope that Weinstein Haggai would be released.
Ali Weinstein, Judih’s niece who lives in Toronto, said in a Dec. 4 interview that the family was on an emotional roller-coaster, feeling grief, joy for the hostages who had been released during a pause in fighting and dread each time her aunt wasn’t among those released.
